The political systems of those countries that had stayed out of the war remained unaffected. In Sweden, Switzerland, Ireland, Iceland, and Portugal politics proceeded following the same rules and under the same conditions as before the war. The same can be said for Spain, where Franco had taken advantage of the period of warfare to con-solidate his victory in the civil war by the wholesale slaughter of his opponents: thousands of supporters of the defeated Republic were killed; many more were imprisoned. By he was firmly entrenched, although some guerrilla activity continued until . Some of the West European states also exhibited remarkable continu-ity: Great Britain, Norway, Denmark, Belgium, Luxembourg, and the Netherlands. They had all been constitutional monarchies before the war, and remained so afterwards.
France too returned to the pre-war political system. There was an attempt to disguise this as the beginning of a novel era by drafting a new constitution for the Fourth Republic. In reality, the differences
See Gabriel Jackson, The Spanish Republic and the Civil War, – (Princeton:
Princeton University Press, ), app.
Paul Preston, The Triumph of Democracy in Spain (London: Methuen, ), .
between the Fourth and the Third Republics were insignificant. Both were based on a weak executive, a figurehead president, and a power-ful parliament dominated by fractious political parties. The same instability that had characterized the Third Republic plagued the gov-ernments of the Fourth. Charles de Gaulle, who had led the anti-fascist forces during the war, failed to secure the strong presidential system he desired and left politics, albeit temporarily.
Elsewhere in Western Europe changes were more significant. Italy had experienced fascist rule for the whole of the inter-war period, had been Germany’s closest ally in , and had turned against it in
. A referendum in established a republic. A new constitution was drafted resulting in a political system relatively similar to that which preceded fascism and analogous to that of the French Fourth Republic.
Austria’s debatable claim that it had been forced into an alliance with Germany worked to its advantage: permanent partition was avoided and the country returned to the parliamentary system it had had in the s. The USSR withdrew its troops and Austria complied with the main condition exacted––permanent neutrality––a situation accepted by all main parties and welcomed by public opinion. Fin-land, which had also been occupied by Soviet troops, followed a similar course.
Even in Germany there was a return to a previous political system––at least in that section that had been partitioned among Western powers. Though the differences between Weimar Germany (–) and the FRG should not be underestimated, the consti-tutional similarities are remarkable, bearing in mind that in the hia-tus between the two were twelve years of Nazism, including six years of total war, and that the outcome was the division of the country.
There was some degree of continuity even in Greece. After the defeat of the communists in the civil war () repression and a rigged electoral system kept the communists and their allies at the margins of political life. Though there was no reversion to the dicta-torship of the Metaxas era, there was a return to the old political cleavage between traditional monarchists and liberal modernizers. It was only after the return of full democracy in that a modern socialist party emerged.
The political institutions that prevailed in Western Europe shortly after the end of the war had thus been tried before it. Nevertheless,
beneath the relative continuity of institutional politics and consti-tutional arrangements there were significant developments. The first was that political democracy was finally consolidated: true universal suffrage became the norm; members of the legislature were now elected by the entire population; women finally obtained the right to vote on the same terms as men in France (), Belgium (), Italy (), and Greece (). Switzerland remained the bizarre exception to universal suffrage until .
The second major development was the considerable advance of the parties of the left, as evidenced by their massive gains in the first post-war elections. Previous major political divisions, such as central-izers versus decentralcentral-izers or anticlericalism versus clericalism, became secondary. The primary ideological cleavage ––within an overarching consensus––was that of left versus right, that is between parties inspired by socialism and those committed to a capitalism tempered by traditional values. The Republic of Ireland, where the national question dominated politics, was the only significant exception to the primacy of the left–right split in democratic Europe.
In Britain in the Labour Party, for the first time in its history, won an absolute majority of seats in the House of Commons and .
per cent of the vote. In Sweden, Norway, and Austria socialist parties gained over per cent. Where these fared less well––as in Finland, France, and Italy, where they gained – per cent––the communist parties gained at least per cent or more. The positive electoral performance of the parties of the left was one aspect of the wave of anti-capitalist feelings that pervaded Europe after the war. In most instances the right or centre-right, far from being dominated by overtly pro-capitalist parties, was led by Christian parties committed to the containment of market forces and the defence of traditional values against unconstrained individualism. Such development was particularly evident in Germany, Austria, Italy, Belgium, and Holland.
This explains the wide political consensus that permeated Western Europe. It enabled post-war reconstruction to be initiated by a coali-tion of parties representing the left, the centre, and even the centre-right. The two important exceptions to this were Great Britain, where Labour ruled alone until , and the FRG, where the first general elections occurred only in ––when the left tide had already subsided––resulting in the victory of the conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU) within a coalition government.
By this stage most of the countries of Western Europe had laid the foundations of their welfare systems. The parties of the left were the main proponents of this development, regarding welfare reforms as a form of socialism or as an advance towards a socialist society. The evolution, however, was not seriously disputed by their conservative opponents, who could legitimately claim that the his-torical forerunners of welfare reforms had been ‘social’ liberals like Lloyd George, authoritarian conservatives like Bismarck, or social Christians. Indeed, the agenda for a post-war welfare system had been drafted during the war by a British Liberal, William Beveridge.
This consensus across the political spectrum explains not only why the welfare states were established in the first place, but also why they outlasted the initial electoral successes of the left. Nevertheless, it was in the one country where the left had overall control of parliament, Britain, that the most comprehensive free national health service was established and where a complex system of social protection, from pensions to unemployment benefits, was set up.
The more prosperous nations, above all the Scandinavian coun-tries, pursued the same path. Fear of old age, illness, and unemployment would no longer trouble the citizens of Europe––or so it was hoped.
The enlargement of the sphere of the state into welfare––replacing, in many instances, the provisions of charitable bodies, usually religious––was accompanied by its extension into the economy. In some instances, notably in Austria, Italy, Britain, and France, this was achieved directly through the nationalization or municipalization of some or all of the utilities (such as gas, water, telephones, and elec-tricity), and some of the manufacturing and extracting industries.
Radio and later television remained totally or in part in the hands of the state, even in market economies. Only in the s was there a systematic expansion of private capital in broadcasting throughout Europe. In all cases the state, through monetary and fiscal policies, took upon itself the task of overseeing the general performance of the economy at the macroeconomic level. The aim was to ensure that the capitalist economic cycle would never again be out of control, plunging the European economies into a devastating depression of
s proportions.
The state had thus become much stronger throughout Western Europe, even in those states, such as the FRG, Austria, and
Switzerland, that had opted for a far less centralist structure than, say, Britain, Sweden, France, and Italy.
West European capitalism emerged from this reconstruction both weakened and strengthened. It was weakened in the sense that entire areas of economic life––for instance, health, transport, gas, electricity, water supply, central banking, and a whole host of public services, from street cleaning to mail delivery––were removed from or kept out of the market. It was strengthened because the rationalization of industries through nationalization led to reduced costs, and because the socialization of public services (health, education, pensions, insurance) amounted to a socialization of expenditure that would otherwise have had to be borne by individuals. This, in turn, con-tained the pressure for higher wages. More generally, the provision of welfare made capitalism more acceptable by reducing the possibility of market failures in the delivery of critical services.
The political fate of the countries of Eastern and Central Europe sharply contrasted with that of their Western counterparts. This was not surprising. Before the war they had all, with the exception of Czechoslovakia, been under some form of authoritarian regime. All had been occupied by Germany. All (except Czechoslovakia) had a large agricultural sector. All had suffered massive losses and devastation ––well in excess of all other Western countries except Germany. Post-war adjustments were made more complex by wide-spread ‘ethnic cleansing’ (the practice had preceded the coinage of the expression), especially in Czechoslovakia, Hungary, and Poland, from where millions of ethnic Germans were expelled. By
there were million so-called Heimatvertriebene (‘people expelled from their homeland’) in the FRG. The Czechoslovak–Hungarian Treaty of led to the exchange of some ,–, Slovaks and Hungarians (though over , remained in Czechoslovakia).
Sporadic fighting amounting to near civil war persisted in Poland until .
All the countries of Eastern Europe had been liberated from Nazi rule by the Red Army, except Albania and Yugoslavia. As a result, communist takeover in these two countries departed from what became the established pattern. The Yugoslav communist leader, Tito (Josip Broz), rejected calls from London and Moscow for a national coalition government with the monarchists, and declared a republic in . As the war was approaching its end, he turned against those
opposing him with methods that included the destruction of villages deemed to have supported Serbian and Croatian nationalists. When Soviet troops entered Yugoslavia, it was with the understanding that Tito’s partisans would remain in power. In Albania the communist party established full control rapidly. Its leader, Enver Hoxha, declared a republic in with the backing of the Allies, while Sta-lin’s diplomatic support enabled him to resist Tito’s attempts to incorporate the country into Yugoslavia. Thus a link was forged between Albanian ‘national’ communism and Stalinism that out-lasted the Soviet condemnation of Stalin’s crimes.
Elsewhere in the East the reorganization of democratic political life occurred under the aegis of Soviet power. The consequence was that the communist parties enjoyed considerable advantages. In any case, immediately after the war the communists had gained in popularity because of their role in resisting Nazism and the prestige of the USSR.
Even among those not ideologically inclined towards communism there were some who were so disenchanted with the past that they regarded the communists as representing modernity and a better future. It was believed that they would get rid of corruption and backwardness. It is impossible to gauge accurately the magnitude of this initial popularity, though the results of the first elections (rela-tively free of interference) indicate that the size of their electorate was comparable to that of the stronger communist parties of Western Europe. Their real influence was, of course, wider than their electoral support. The authoritarian right had been wiped out, its leaders purged. The political parties that re-emerged were reluctant to take a strong anti-communist line, for this might have tarred them with the brush of fascism. The presence of the Red Army and the weight of the USSR was a substantial obstacle to the free expression of anti-communist views. Political opportunists swelled the ranks of the left as they had previously swelled those of the right. Communist parties that had been tiny organizations before the war grew exponentially in numbers––a phenomenon that also occurred in Italy, where the Ital-ian Communist Party, the PCI, grew from , in to million in . The communists pushed everywhere for the formation and/
or continuation of governments of national unity. While these broad coalition governments emerged throughout most of continental Europe, in the East the communists always had the upper hand because they benefited from financial, logistic, and organizational
help from the Soviet Union. This is the situation that prevailed between and –.
The coalition strategy adopted by all communist parties assumed that governments of national unity would oversee the entire period of post-war reconstruction. In the East, where they had a position of strength, they used it to maximize their hold on political power.
Initially, however, there was no blueprint for a generalized takeover.
Soviet policy, in so far as it had clearly defined aims, was directed towards ensuring that all neighbouring states would have govern-ments friendly to that of the USSR. The communists were cautious and prudent, pursued compromise, and avoided an excessively rad-ical agenda, concentrating instead on demanding agrarian reform and a limited expansion of the public sector.
This explains why in Romania the communists, led by the independent-minded Gheorghe Gheorgiu-Dej, allowed the mon-archy to survive the war until , supported a ‘friendly’ non-communist, Petru Groza, as prime minister, included representatives of the liberals and of the National Peasant Party in the government (), and promulgated a moderate agrarian reform that left Church lands untouched. But in the National Peasant Party was banned, the social democrats were pressured into merging with the commun-ists, and King Michael was forced to abdicate. The landslide victory of the new People’s Democratic Front––in effect the communist party––in the rigged elections of March ensured the final takeover.
In Bulgaria the coalition strategy was equally short-term. Wide-spread purges ensured the elimination of all possible anti-communist forces, the rest being forcibly compelled to join the communist-dominated Fatherland Front, this process being completed only in
with the forcible absorption of the social democrats.
In Hungary the communists had obtained only per cent of the vote in , their socialist rivals a little more, while the Smallholder Party, or KGP (itself a coalition of disparate groups), gained an abso-lute majority; their leader, Ferenc Nágy, became prime minister in a coalition government that included the communists. By the purges of former fascists and collaborators had weakened further the anti-communist forces. In spite of irregularities during the
election campaign, the Hungarian communists obtained only per cent, though, with their allies, which now included the rapidly
disintegrating KGP, they constituted a bloc of some per cent. By
, when new elections were held, this bloc had turned itself into the communist-controlled Hungarian Workers’ Party, which no other group dared to oppose. The establishment of a single-party system was complete.
A similar pattern occurred in Czechoslovakia: first the constitution of a national unity government, followed by a merger between com-munists and socialists, and then the expulsion of the right from the coalition leading to the communist takeover of .
In Poland the Nazi genocide of the Jews, the shifting of the bound-aries some miles to the west, and the ethnic cleansing of Germans had made the country more ethnically and religiously homogeneous than ever before. The first initiatives of the government of national unity––nationalization and a three-year plan––were devised by the socialist PPS. The creation of a new party––the Polish United Work-ers’ Party––was as much, if not more, the work of socialists ensuring their own future than that of the communists themselves. Other parties were allowed to survive, while in the rural sector the strength of the peasants’ associations and the need to ensure farmers’ support to feed the country prevented any significant collectivization.
In Germany, on one view, the Soviet leaders had asked for a demilitarized Germany rather than the establishment of a distinct state in the East. It was only when they realized that the West would not accede to this request and after the Federal Republic was created that they authorized the formation of the GDR. This was ruled, until
, by the SED, the de facto communist party––the result of a merger with the social democrats with the cooperation of their leader, Otto Grotewohl.
Thus was completed what is generally known as the communist takeover of Eastern and Central Europe. The expression is tech-nically valid in the sense that communist rule was never electorally sanctioned or put to the test. It is nevertheless misleading if it is taken to signify that there was some grand plan hatched somewhere in the Kremlin instead of the far more likely, if less exciting, explanation: all
Norman Davies, ‘Poland’, in Martin McCauley (ed.), Communist Power in Europe
– (Basingstoke: Macmillan, ), –.
See Wilfried Loth, Stalin’s Unwanted Child: The Soviet Union, the German Ques-tion and the Founding of the GDR (Basingstoke: Macmillan, ), for the controversial view that Stalin did not wish to have a separate German socialist state.
parties reacted to events by maximizing their power and undermin-ing their opponents by all available means. The idea of a grand plan became widespread after the takeover by both sides in the cold war, either to confirm the myth of the far-reaching political intelligence of communists as the holders of the keys of History, able to mould events at will, or to stigmatize them as unusually devilish conspirators against whom it was necessary to be permanently vigilant.
These events should not obscure the fact that, initially, the main economic and social policies advanced by the communist-dominated coalition governments in Eastern and Central Europe prior to
were not significantly different from those advocated in the West by democratic socialist forces: agrarian reform and the extension of the public sector through nationalizations. Later the process of elimin-ation of private property proceeded rapidly, if unevenly, in the East, while it was contained in the West.
Thus, by – communist rule was in place throughout Eastern
Thus, by – communist rule was in place throughout Eastern